


Certain, Uncertain

by miraphora



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-15 09:21:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16930611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miraphora/pseuds/miraphora
Summary: Have a random Smuggler x Corso Riggs SWTOR fic I wrote during law school in one of my super rare bouts of writing (I pretty much went for 10 years without writing anything except this and I think a stray In Plain Sight fic).Details events of Mule Out of Water quest (so spoilers for that and some subtle references to prior Romance storyline encounters) and occurs following that outcome. Possible AU because I’ve hopped the gun a bit and have only played up to this quest so far.  The ending of this bit did not go at all as I had imagined, but I blame Corso and his mule-headed chivalry.





	Certain, Uncertain

**Author's Note:**

> Have a random Smuggler x Corso Riggs SWTOR fic I wrote during law school in one of my super rare bouts of writing (I pretty much went for 10 years without writing anything except this and I think a stray In Plain Sight fic).
> 
> Details events of Mule Out of Water quest (so spoilers for that and some subtle references to prior Romance storyline encounters) and occurs following that outcome. Possible AU because I’ve hopped the gun a bit and have only played up to this quest so far. The ending of this bit did not go at all as I had imagined, but I blame Corso and his mule-headed chivalry.

Mira lay awake for hours in bed, arms crossed behind her head on the stiff synthfiber pillow. Her cabin was dimly lit by the auxiliary lights of the wall modules and the bed’s thermal controls, and the security light on her cabinet blinked a steady reassuring blue. She wasn’t tired, or restless, or unhappy. Just thoughtful—reviewing how the whole thing had gone to banthashit.

She’d known when she laid eyes on “Doctor Hope” what the story was likely to be—had worked hard to keep her face impassive and not shift her gaze in Corso’s direction. She’d thought at first when she found him looking right back at her that he’d realized as well.  

But no.  

Corso had one of those rare hearts of gold where it came to things like family and damsels in distress. Not blinders exactly—not naiveté. She knew those scars on his face weren’t an accident; had seen the damage that extended down his torso and disappeared into the waistband of his pants—you didn’t live on even a roomy Corellian freighter with three grown adults and a chatty droid with any sort of expectation of privacy or fear of casual intimacy. And she suspected from the way he handled his weapons, from the constant, heightened awareness he had of her own positioning during fights, that his stint in the Peace Brigade hadn’t been peaceful or easy or nearly as brief as he would have liked her to believe.

So when he’d tilted his head at her and given that wry half-smile, she’d been relieved—had taken a breath and started to turn away from the “doctor.” And then Corso had stepped closer to the repellant being, lips compressed with determination, and nodded once, curtly.  Her heart had tripped in her chest, the toe of her boot catching on the sticky cantina floor.

  _No._

And then she’d followed him into a darkened room, sweaty palm gripping the butt of Flashy—that damned blaster, it kept overheating, and she kept mod'ing it up and replacing the cooling cells, like the Force-be-damned thing meant something—smelling the disinfectant-and-copper of a surgery.  And had to swallow against bile at the sucking/tearing sound of the scalpel slicing into Corso’s bronze flesh, his soft grunt of discomfort, and the crinkle of plastic. 

She had turned away abruptly, unable to watch the blood welling around the tidy plastic wrappers as the doctor tucked them deftly between the dermal and muscle layers.  Not a micrometer of fat on those abdominals.

And then they were out the door of the cantina, heading at a crisp walk for Black Sun territory, Corso’s full lips still compressed, and she knew blood was trickling down under his heavy body armor, but she didn’t say anything.  Not one word.

She was too busy praying to gods she didn’t believe in that they wouldn’t find Rona curled up in a corner of some seedy dive with a rusty needle in her arm.

* * *

 

She had spotted Big Jan as soon as they stepped into Silent Sun Cantina, passing by the belligerent bouncer harassing strung out turfers in the line.  She had taken note of the creepy pale-skinned creature on a previous visit, taking her for a regular customer.  If anything should have tipped off Corso…

She had touched his forearm lightly, just to get his attention, and tilted her head in the “nurse's” direction.

The exchange had gone about like she’d expected.

Glitterstim—Kessel’s finest.

She had been pretty sure when she saw the packets the good doctor had inserted under her crewmate’s flesh, but Corso of course hadn’t recognized it, farmboy and idealistic mercenary that he was.  Viidu hadn’t struck her as the sort to truck in spice if he could help it, and soldiers—even mercenaries—tended to prefer adrenal stims to underworld goods.  There was no reason he should have known.

His eyes had flickered with a guttering flame of hurt when she’d pointed out his ignorance in front of Big Jan.  She shouldn’t have done it, but seeing him hurt made her mad, and it was his own fault, damnit it, so she had lashed out at him—of course.

She’d wanted to kill Big Jan, too, and it was a sign of Corso’s slipping self-control that he’d barely protested when she threatened the female creature.  Things had only gotten worse when they’d returned to the Market to confront the doctor.

Rona had been a surprise, but less so for Mira than for her partner.  Mira had been able to see the solid inner core that, in Corso, was wrapped in chivalrous fluff, and in his cousin had been whittled down to a chipped and tarnished block of greedy resolve.  She’s said what she had to the gangster because Corso needed to hear it, not because she thought Rona was going to give up her grasping ambition and follow them back to the ship.

And now.

Well.

* * *

 

They’d come back to the hangar together, but worlds apart.  When they got onto the ship, she’d opened her mouth first thing to tell him to let her tend the incisions the “nurse” had left, and gotten an opaque and quelling look before she could speak.  The last she’d seen of Corso had been his rigid back as he disappeared through the med bay door, followed by a fussy C2-N2.

After that, she’d hit up the ‘fresher unit, trying to luxuriate in the soapy silkiness of her clean russet curls down her back and the cool citrus scent of the soap she took in trade whenever she had to run basic supplies to tropical planets in the Core, but kept having to shake the image of that opaque look out of her head.  Finally she’d given it up as a bad job and tramped back to her cabin, naked and indignant, hair still dripping down her back and into the crevice of her ass—those dryer ports never put out enough heat and force to dry her mass of hair—one of these days she was going to cut every last ropy copper strand of it off and burn it—

She had made it to her cabin doorway just in time to catch an arched brow and sardonically appreciative glance from Risha, just emerging from the cargo hold and her endless holonet studies.  Mira had just clutched her dirty wad of clothes tighter to the ample swell of her breasts and snorted repressively as she stalked into her cabin and the portal whisked shut behind her.

So here she was, a few sleepless standard time units later, mind focused but not urgent, speculative but reserved.  Weighing.

Eventually, the holovid of the day looping in her mind wound down and spooled to a halt.  Her body knew where it was going before her mind registered the cool durasteel plates under her bare feet.  Her hair swung in disorderly waves down her back and over her shoulders, pressed flat from the bed, dry from the recycled air.  It would have never been that flat on Alderaan, where the humidity and the tang of saltwater lakes crinkled each hair up as if alive and the nectar—   

The nectar.

Mira grimaced and shook her hair back from her face.

That damned droid and his meddling.  The faint tang of honeyed Alderaanian nectar still lingered in the ship, floating out at odd moments from the air system to catch her unawares, though she’d nearly dismantled C2N2 when he announced that he’d pumped it into the system, and demanded that he run an immediate ozone cycle to clear it out or suffer dire consequences.

The last thing she wanted to think about right now was Alderaan, or nectar.

The durasteel warmed under her feet as she stood still, her mind collecting itself firmly.  Then she was moving to the doorway, licking her lips as it hissed quietly open, stepping through before she could think too hard.  The warm grease and dust and metal scent of the ship surrounded her comfortingly as she padded down the corridor.

The archway into the cockpit glowed faintly green from the ambient frame lighting.  She reached out, gripping the frame with one hand, still and barely breathing.  Listening.

She knew he was there, knew he would have been drawn to the front viewports to stare into the endless velvet and scattered brilliants of space, but it was still a moment before she could make out his breathing from the muted hum of the ship’s standby systems.  Not asleep, she thought—the measured zen-like cadence of deep reflection.

There was half a second’s hesitation between one breath and the next—he had heard her.  Licking her lips again, trying not to think about salt and humidity, she stepped up over the threshold and padded into the cockpit.

He was in the crew chair front and right of her captain’s chair, tilted back, long legs stretched out, bantha-hide boots propped on the forward console.  His head was leaned back against the headrest, face turned to the starboard viewport.  The soft orange glow of system indicators washed his chiseled face in a chiaroscuro of light and shadow.  Her gaze traced the broad slant of the cheekbone she could see in profile.

She hovered in the entry—certain, and uncertain—listening to him breathe.

“I knew.”

His gravelly honey voice broke the silence first, though she could see from the twist of his mouth that he still wasn’t sure it was what he wanted to say.  No easy way with words, this space cowboy.  He’d admitted to that baldly, honestly, stumbling earnestly over a half-rehearsed speech.

“Did you.”  Not a question, and more acidic and ironic than she’d meant to be.  She could feel her own mouth twisting.

He didn’t turn to look at her, but something settled the tension at the corners of his eyes and mouth.  Maybe it was resolve.  “It was all over your face, Captain,” softly.

Mira made a disgruntled noise in her throat and trailed her fingertips delicately over the controls of the navcomm beside her, like a touchstone.  Her damned glass face.  She didn’t ask the obvious or make demands— _then why’d you do it, damn you._

He knew what she was thinking.  Four planets, too many gunfights.  He didn’t know where she’d come from, where she’d been, but he breathed her air, shared her water and her stale rations, fought at her side and felt her blood on his skin.  Yeah, he knew her well enough for that.

“There’s always hope, Captain.  I hope, and you do what needs doing.”

_We make a good team._

He didn’t say it, but she knew it was there.  Maybe they both knew each other too well.

Her fingers ran to the edge of the navcomm console, and braced on the edge, poised, knowing there was nothing but empty air in front of them—but her toes felt the seam of a durasteel plate beneath her feet, and knew there was solid ground in front of her.

As her feet edged forward, her fingers drifted out, reaching, and came to rest on his shoulder.  His muscles were solid under the calluses at the tips of her fingers.  She licked her lips.

 “Captain.”  His voice was a quiet rumble, inviting, affirming, but—not enticing, alluring, ingratiating.  Not a polished Darmas purr.  Not a political voice.  Just the soft, graveled honey voice of a man.

Her hand flexed, slid down to clasp his shoulder—certain and uncertain.  He was warm, the fabric of his thin shirt barely a barrier between her palm and the heat of his skin.  Her body was certain, even if part of her mind was still mulling over the consequences.

She shuffled closer.  Tilted back, the headrest of the crew chair was below the level of her chest, and his bundled dreds brushed across the exposed upper swell of her breasts.  A breath eased out of her lungs on a long exhale.

Her fingers, intrepid explorers that they had become, drifted downward, leading her palm over the curve of his clavicle and into the v-neck of his shirt.  His skin felt good—better—than she’d expected.  Like suede.

Her feet brought her up against the back of the chair without her thinking, and her hand kept on its journey until it rested on his breastbone, the slow thud of his heart sending a shudder all through her body at the strangely erotic thought that she could feel the lifeforce pulsing from his heart into her fingertips…

The pulse skipped a beat and she realized he had stopped breathing for a moment.  He arched his head back farther, his neck was a taut line of burnished skin.

 “Mira.”  

He breathed her name on his next exhale, and she was circling the chair, feeling his heat travel up her arm to war with the chill of the cockpit on her mostly exposed skin and raise bumps all over her body.  She needed to see his face.

Corso reached up and grasped her wrist lightly, caressing rather than controlling.  His warm, dry skin sent yet another shiver through her body.

Her face was bathed in soft gold from the system lights, her eyes glittering, wide and staring into his.  Her full berry-stain lips parted slightly and the faintest hint of her tongue flickered at the corner, wetting them.  It sent a jolt all the way to his groin.

He sat up, boots settling with a faint clank on the durasteel, careful of her bare feet.  She was always walking around the ship barefoot, toes grasping like a gymnast.  Her hand flexed against his breastbone like a starfish, and he raised it to his lips, pressing a kiss to her palm, warm from contact with his chest and callused from gripping a blaster.

Her eyes had settled into full awareness, less wide, but open and honest, dark hollows with a flicker of smooth Corellian brandy from the reflected console lights.  Her hand cupped against his mouth, holding his kiss, then stroked back along his jaw.  He wasn’t sure if he was leading her hand or only following it, but he still had his palm cradled around it as it slid around to rest on the nape of his neck, fingertips stroking.

She was in front of him now, the swell of her hips bared by the low waist of a pair of shorts and a thin top that rode up from the burden of trying to cover both breasts and midriff adequately.  He could smell her—citrus and warm female musk, the sort of scent any farmboy recognized.

His other hand, fingers curled around the chair’s armrest in a show of restraint, ached to feel that soft petal skin.  He opened his mouth to speak, realized his vocal chords had been frozen tight with desire, and cleared his throat painfully, his eyes firmly caught in her gaze.  Her fingers were rubbing small circles on the back of his neck.

“Can I touch you?”

It came out as a hoarse rasp and he felt a flush of shame burn his chest.  He sounded like a teenager!

Her lips curved up at one corner, fingers still stroking his neck, unperturbed.  She straddled his knees—he thought he felt his heart stop—feet braced apart on the floorplates for balance, and he found his hand drifting from the armrest to settle on the sweet curve of her hip without thinking.

 “Corso.”

Her voice was soft and throaty.  She smirked suddenly, easing down onto his lap, her knees snugging up beside his hips as he automatically slid forward to help her balance.  He stroked the hand on her wrist up her forearm, ruffling the fine gold hairs, making her shiver again as he cradled her shoulder gently.  He slid the hand on her hip back as she sat, feeling down-soft hairs prickle up at the small of her back.  The solid shapely weight of her perched on his thighs sent a graphic, desperate image through his head of her pressed back on the console in front of him as he plowed into her sweet body.

The flush of shame mingled with desire climbed up his neck and she leaned in close, her breasts brushing against his chest.  Her brandy eyes were tender but mischievous.

He could barely breathe from the need to kiss her.

 “I need you to do more than touch me,” she breathed, mouth inching closer to his.

He wanted to take her in his lap—against the bulkhead—on the hard floor panels.  He wanted to tell her to stop—to wait—that he wanted her for more than one night.  He wanted too many things at once.

Mira saw the warzone in his dark eyes, felt the throb of him below her, the hesitation of quiet desperation in his breaths.  She wanted to graze her lips against his cheekbone, whisper what she wanted in his ear, take him into her while he was still fighting against his body’s instincts.

But she held his gaze with hers as she brought one hand back to his chest, pressed flat to his breastbone, right over his heart.

 “It’s not over, farmboy.  It’s just beginning.”

He shuddered all through his body, clasping her close against him and captured her lips in a searing kiss.  She moaned softly against his mouth, getting hot like a blaster core in his hands and—

His heart almost exploded under her hand as she settled the heat of her body, right between her thighs, firmly against his groin.

“Mira!”

His mouth devoured hers hungrily, all his tightly coiled strength tensing below her, focused into the stroke and thrust of his tongue as he—finally—took what he wanted and felt her gasp.

Her hands roamed, stroking down his torso, slipping up under his shirt—why did he have to be fully dressed—rubbing up over his ribs.  She wanted to feel every centimeter of his body against hers, inside hers, and right that minute.  Her hips were rocking against him in a slow, grinding rhythm, and she could feel his pulse hammering.  His mouth was urgent on hers, and his tongue did something deeply erotic that had her making a purely embarrassing mewling sound into his mouth, hips jerking suddenly closer.

That drove him to a halt, and he tore his mouth free of hers, gulping air like a drowning man, his hands coming down hard on her hips and holding her still, wedged tight against his body.  His eyes were shut tight, the skin across his cheekbones thinned with tension as he tried to get control of his breathing and his hammering pulse and the need to pound her right through their clothes and the transparisteel viewport, right into the stars.

Mira tried to move, and his hands tightened, fingers flexing painfully into the flesh of her hips for a moment and startling a soft growl of protest from her, before he grunted an apology and forced his eyes open.  His heart was still going like a triphammer, but he didn’t think he was going to lose it right there—for the moment.

She was staring into his eyes from mere centimeters away, her lips swollen and dark.

“Sorry,” he muttered thickly, hands caressing where he’d grabbed her.  He swallowed, trying to clear his throat.

She waited, hands resting on his shoulders.

 “You’ve got me tied up in knots, Captain,” he said, almost in his normal voice.  “Don’t want to have a blaster malfunction on our hands.”  Wry.

That got a quick laugh from her, and relaxed them both a bit.  Neither one of them was any less aware of his heat trapped beneath her, but they’d maybe be ok.  Mira heaved a steadying breath, perfectly aware that it made her breasts swell prominently, and grinned at him.

 “No, don’t want that.”  She kneaded her hands on his shoulders like a cat and waited, biding her time, allowing him to collect himself.  If he started rambling the way he had each previous time he’d attempted to start something with her…

His own hands were still on her hips, his callused thumbs stroking at either side of her navel.  “You are so gorgeous, you know that?”

She cocked her head, lips curled in a wry smile.  “The obvious answer to that is: of course.”  She chuckled softly, shifting her hips just a hair to see the heat flicker in his eyes.

He leaned forward, pressing his mouth to the soft hollow below her earlobe, large hands slipping back to link at the small of her back.  “Don’t worry, Captain,” he whispered, the frontiersy twang nearly gone from the softness of his voice.  “I’ve got you.”

“You’re always saying that.”  She murmured it softly, absently, eyes narrowing to slits of pleasure from the warmth of his mouth on her throat.  He must have felt able to control himself finally, because he didn’t seem to mind when her hips shifted again, a little helplessly.

 “Must mean it’s true, huh?”  He had found a patch of pale flesh he liked, and settled in to kiss and suck it tenderly, leaving a faint strawberry mark that would fade before morning.  Something deep down in the pit of his stomach wanted to mark her to last, but the scrap of sense gaining back influence up in the front of his skull didn’t want to give Risha something to make sideways comments about.

 “Hm? Ahum.”  Her voice was abstracted, and she made a soft sound of protest when he eased back to look up at her.  Her amber eyes were closed, lashes dark against her cheeks.

She was ready for it, and he knew he could have her—hells, he almost HAD had her, not five minutes ago, right there in his lap…  But he was certain, even if she wasn’t yet.  He knew how he wanted her, and it wasn’t going to be on her terms, back to business in the morning.  When he made love to this woman for the first time it wasn’t going to be in the darkened cockpit of a sleeping ship, or the back room of a cantina, or on an Outer Rim world under the wreckage of a troop transport just because the odds were looking grim and it was going to take one hell of a miracle or a convenient Jedi to get them out of it—

It probably wasn’t going to be after a fancy meal and a bottle of fine wine, either, because he could just hear her shooting that down in his head now with a flippant retort.

But the first time he made love to this woman, she was going to be certain.

Those amber eyes drifted open slowly, searching his face.  He could tell from the way her body had relaxed against his, though, that she already knew the moment was gone.

Mira started to open her mouth, started to ask  _Are you sure?_ , but she could see from his tender expression that he was.  She didn’t know how to feel—her mind was divided between a fit of temper for being rebuffed, hurt (which still lead directly to anger), casual insouciance, irreverence, and fatalistic acceptance.  And of course he could see it written all over her face.

His mouth quirked at the corner.  “It’s not over, Captain.”

Her eyes narrowed sharply, and he thought for a second that he’d made a serious miscalculation—wouldn’t have been the first time, his was more of a barge in rifle blasting style—but she wasn’t angry.  He could see a cryptic quirk in the corner of her mouth—and for a moment wanted to kiss it, but it wasn’t fair to light her up like a welding torch and leave her aching anymore than he already had.

 “I should have left you for the Rahkgouls,” she muttered at him, the faintest hint of irony winning out in her eyes.

He could feel her collecting herself to push off his lap and stand, but before she could do more than tense her muscles, he had hooked one arm up along her spine and the other securely under her generous ass and hefted her up into his arms, pushing himself from the chair and standing with a solid, soft, sweet-smelling double handful of Captain.  She bit off a sharp yelp, bare calves squeezing around his hips reflexively, fingers biting sharply into his shoulders.

The expression on her face was priceless—somewhere between religious fervor, stark terror, and ecstasy.  She was muttering something under her breath, but it wasn’t audible.  He stood with his legs braced for a moment and waited for her to get ahold of herself.

What she wanted to do was kill him, right there in her cockpit, and jettison his body in the damned escape pod.  She had just been coming to terms with the fact that their heated encounter was going to turn into another infamous Riggs retreat, and then he had to go and deadlift her from a seated position so that she’d have no doubt what it would have felt like if he’d pounded her into the nearest bulkhead.  She cracked open one eye, spearing him with a hateful look.

 “Don’t ever do that again.  Or, I promise you, you won’t like the consequences.”  Her tone was dead even, but her breathing was not.  It was some small consolation that from his expression she could tell that the part of his brainstem connected directly to his groin was more than ready to entertain her fantasy.

The damned farmboy just smiled crookedly, turned, and bent to settle her in the chair he’d vacated.  “Whatever you say, Captain.”  There was the faintest pressure of his lips against hers, gone before she could even think to protest, and then he was halfway down the corridor, just a retreating shadow.

Mira cursed under her breath and collapsed back in the chair, wishing she had her blaster so she could shoot something.   _That man isn’t half so stupid as he pretends.  Not suave, my ass._

She realized ruefully that it was going to continue to be a sleepless night, and finally relaxed into the chair with one leg pulled up, arms anchored around her knee, settling in to watch the stars.

 

* * *

 

 

Corso was laid out in his bunk, arms crossed behind his head, feeling at peace for the first time since he’d talked the captain into going to Coruscant.  Rona would see.  He’d keep hoping, and the captain would do what needed to be done.

 

_“Go with your Captain.  Maybe you two can…show me how to make a better life.”_

 


End file.
